GE sequences stem cells in China

Chalfont St Giles/Bejing – GE Healthcare has launched a stem cell cooperation in China. Together with the Bejing Genomics Institute (BGI), the UK-based healthcare unit of the US technology major will perform a multi-year research collaboration in stem cell science. The Chinese sequencing specialist will help to explore the underlying genetic variation between ethnically diverse human stem cell lines, which may help to help advance the potential of stem cell-derived assays for use in drug discovery and toxicity testing.

GE and the BGI made the collaboration public at a special signing ceremony attended by Amr Abid, General Manager Cell Technologies at GE Healthcare Life Sciences and the three leading executives from the BGI. Two projects are planned in the frame of the cooperation. As a first project, BGI is performing genome sequencing and epigenetic analysis on cardiomyocytes and hepatocytes supplied by GE Healthcare Life Sciences. The aim is to map the genetic variation across an ethnically diverse range of stem cell lines and to examine the changes that occur during differentiation into specific cell types. As a basis for the second project, GE Healthcare will provide BGI with a IN Cell Analyzer 2000 system for high content cellular imaging analysis. The analyzer will be used by BGI to investigate gene function for a library of previously sequenced cell types by over-expressing or blocking the activity of single genes and observing the effect in selected populations of cells.

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